Andreeva (Golubeva) N.A., Preobrazhenskaya S.V. Transformations of Identity Styles in a Digital Society

When studying everyday life, we are faced with the challenges of the digital era, which essentially involve the same universal human and social problems. The digital landscape boom, the high-speed mobile Internet and the development of new technologies contribute to the manifestation, resolution or aggravation of these problems. A large number of issues have continued to remain over the past decades of rapid growth of the digital environment. Among them are misinformation, different types of violence and addictions, lack of data security, general dissatisfaction with mental well-being in the digital environment, lack of trust in the acquired information, difficulties related to the perception, processing and reprocessing of infinite data flows that affect the process of memorization and reproduction, and so forth. These problems are actively rising and aggravating with the development of the digital landscape and we believe they are becoming a topical subject of psychological research. This article intends to empirically study the individual and personal characteristics of the user identity style and the unique information perception and processing features as well as to undertake a comparative analysis of the leading way of user perception over the past decade. It also aims to study the relationship between digital identity style and commitment scale and life satisfaction in the information society. Several series of studies involving more than 365 people have been carried out, with respondents divided into two age groups – young people aged 16–27 (N = 285) and middle-aged people aged 27–50 (N = 80). The first series has been devoted to the comparative analysis of data received from the study of the leading way of perceiving and processing information and its relationship with the digital awareness level and the digital identity style in two age groups. The data acquired in 2012, 2016 and 2023 have been compared. The second series of the study has been devoted to the analysis of the relationship between digital identity style and commitment scale. The third series of the study has been devoted to the analysis of the relationship between identity style and life satisfaction in the information society. Changes in the ways of information perception and processing have been revealed. For example, the results obtained have shown that compared to 2012 there are now 3.5 times more people who perceive and process information in a digital way. The digital way of acquiring information is being interiorized. The relationship between digital identity and commitment scale and digital modality has been established. Commitment helps to navigate the constantly changing information flow while the digital way of perceiving and processing information helps to collect information and build an effective strategy for its processing, systematize it and apply it. A tendency for the prevalence of a diffuse identity style among young respondents has been observed. The diffuse style helps to choose the most relevant information in a given situation, which corresponds to the characteristics of the digital modality. In turn, the digital identity helps to better navigate the incoming information flow.

Key words: digital everyday life, digital awareness, leading information perception modality, digital identity, commitment

For citation: Andreeva (Golubeva), N., Preobrazhenskaya, S. (2023). Transformations of Identity Styles in a Digital Society. New Psychological Research, No. 3, 90–107. DOI: 10.51217/npsyresearch_2023_03_03_05

Acknowledgment

The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project 19-18-00516.